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- About the lawsuits of the devil: an enterprising businessman robs Russians with the help of courts
About the lawsuits of the devil: an enterprising businessman robs Russians with the help of courts
An organized group through front companies is massively filing lawsuits in courts throughout Russia on fictitious grounds. The defendants are former acquaintances and relatives of the alleged organizer of the scheme. Law enforcement agencies have been sending statements to each other for four months, and new lawsuits continue to arrive in the courts. Lawyers are talking about a legal disaster — the "blindness" of the courts when accepting claim documents, combined with the personal data of Russians that has leaked online, makes it possible to make debtors of any person. Izvestia dealt with the story.
The template scheme
A resident of Khabarovsk, a jeweler-technician of pre-retirement age with a salary of 55 thousand rubles, has spent more than 90 thousand rubles on handwriting examinations in recent months. I gave another 40 thousand to a lawyer. And this is despite the fact that she did not commit any crimes, did not conduct any business activities, and did not participate in divorce proceedings.
One day, a woman found out that a certain company was trying to sue her for half a million rubles under a contract for the supply of goods, which she had never signed. This is a typical deception scheme that is gaining momentum in Russia. People are being bombarded with trumped-up lawsuits in the hope that sooner or later they will pay. Those who do not make concessions will face years of trials, challenging bailiffs' decisions, spending on expenses and write—offs.
"Each handwriting study costs 7 thousand rubles, and there are already 13 signatures," lawyer Marina Reznik, who has already united about 40 victims across Russia to jointly confront the criminal scheme, tells Izvestia.
She acts as a private investigator, volunteer, and lawyer all rolled into one: she monitors court files, finds people in different regions who suddenly have debts to unknown companies, and connects them.
"I go into the file cabinets of the courts of general jurisdiction, I begin to analyze: suitable, not suitable. If I find out from some similar points that "our patient" may be, I call Khabarovsk: "Do you know such names and surnames?" - "Yes, these are our former colleagues," Marina describes her work.
The Lord of Suits
The person involved in this story is Viktor Borisovich M., a former resident of Khabarovsk, a construction worker by training, who once tried to work in the field of security, and then "came up with a scheme." He is currently registered in Krasnogorsk, Moscow region, across the street from the post office from which all lawsuits are sent.
According to lawyer Reznik, Viktor M. operates under the guise of at least 35 one-day firms — the connection with the organizations can be traced through the composition of the founders and company officials.
"Most of the one—day firms were opened in April-May 2025, and in September they were already undergoing liquidation due to the unreliability of the data submitted to the Federal Tax Service. Checking accounts are blocked — money can enter, but not exit. Therefore, in each case, citizen M. (the full details of the participant are available to the editorial staff) claims procedural succession for himself or for a company controlled by him, registered directly in his apartment," explains lawyer Reznik the subtleties of fraud, allowing to receive money from people indirectly.
The lawyer found at least 215 lawsuits across Russia: Moscow, Khabarovsk, Sverdlovsk region, Samara, Saratov, Vologda, Ivanovo, Tver, Pskov, Nizhny Novgorod, Kirov and other regions.
How justice is forged
According to the victims, the accomplices create a legal entity or select a company, prepare a package of completely forged documents. These are, as a rule, a delivery contract with a forged signature of the "defendant"; invoices (also with a forged signature); a letter of claim (allegedly sent to the defendant); a forged payment order for payment of state duty with a non-existent checking account; a forged postal receipt with a track number that does not exist in the Russian Post database.
"All the documents they file with the court are forged. The courts cannot verify this at the adoption stage, and then it's too late," the lawyer says.
The courts see the "paid" state duty and the "sent" notices, accept the claim for production. Since the defendant lives thousands of kilometers away and does not receive a summons (it is sent to the wrong address specified by the plaintiff). In the future, Themis makes a decision on recovery in absentia.
Complains on behalf of the defendant
The most cynical part of the scheme was discovered by accident. One of the defendants received an envelope by mail, opened it and found an appeal on his behalf — the court returned it as filed with violations at the actual address of residence.
"If scammers see that people do not react to the processes against them in any way, they do not go to the courts, then they file appeals on behalf of these victims — also with a fake signature. The appellate authorities either return or refuse. And everything. When a person actually finds out that he has a court, the decision has already entered into force," says Marina Reznik.
Moreover, in one of the sessions on another episode of falsification, the judge informed the lawyer that the case had received an application for recognition of the claim on behalf of the victim. This document also turned out to be a fake.
"I tell the court: this statement is also falsified. And when I brought all the evidence — that the state duty was not paid, that the postal receipts and contracts were forged, plus I attached a handwriting study — the judge figured it out and dismissed the claim," says the lawyer.
The victims are their own
Almost all the victims know M. personally: he lived next door to them in Khabarovsk.
"Everyone I've talked to knows him. Either they are former colleagues or not blood relatives. He also breeds them according to the same scheme," says the lawyer.
In Reznik's folder, there is a case where M. filed a lawsuit on behalf of a man who died in 2023, while the fake contract is dated 2025. The daughter of the deceased managed to submit a death certificate to the court — one case was stopped, the second is still "hanging," says Reznik.
"If she hadn't found out, he would have gone to the heirs to collect later," Marina explains.
Interregional inaction
The victims have been trying to open a criminal case since January 2026. However, starting from the first application to the law enforcement agencies, there are only refusals: "they did not see the corpus delicti." Applications submitted to the Khabarovsk regional Department of the Investigative Committee (with attached examinations and bank responses) on falsification of evidence in a civil court (Article 303 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) were sent to the office of the Investigative Committee for the Khabarovsk Territory. However, no criminal case was initiated.
"In accordance with the procedural legislation, the applications in question were sent on territoriality and jurisdiction," said Antonina Bulankina, senior assistant to the head of the Investigative Committee for the Khabarovsk Territory and the Jewish Autonomous Region.
"The Regional Department of the Investigative Committee has sent the data to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the police are sending the materials to the territorial departments at the place of residence of the victims. The materials are "playing football" from one region to another. According to article 303 (falsification of evidence), the crime scene is the court where the claim was filed. As a general rule, such inter—regional multi-episode crimes should be investigated by the central office of the TFR, but the situation is of no interest to anyone yet," Resnik is indignant.
At the same time, she emphasizes that all the routine work for the investigation has already been done.
"I have a response from the Treasury that the payment of the state duty has not been received. The response from the Russian Post is that at least two track numbers are missing from the database. There are handwriting studies that prove that the signatures were made with one hand — the hand of M. It remains only to initiate a case and provide a service to justice."
It should be noted that for the 215 lawsuits appearing in Reznik's materials alone, the unpaid state duty amounts to approximately 5 million rubles.
The caravan is coming
And the lawsuits keep coming. On May 8, 2026, five more lawsuits from one-day firms were filed with the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow.
"Until M. is stopped, he will just sit and 'draw,'" Marina Reznik sums up.
The difficulty in attracting possible scammers lies in the fact that no material damage has been caused yet, with the exception of a few unfortunate people who agreed to give the money to the litigant, if only they would be left alone.
According to lawyer Ekaterina Krasnova, the choice of pensioners as defendants is not accidental.
— In the event of a citizen's death, the heirs will either have to pay the debt or sue the creditors. In this case, the heirs have difficulty confirming the fact of the transaction, obtaining samples for examination. Many people will pay just to enter, for example, into the inheritance rights to real estate, to receive money from the accounts of the deceased.
According to Krasnova, this kind of scheme is potentially dangerous for civil proceedings. If an attacker easily manages to fraudulently create a real hell for a citizen, this can turn into a legal disaster, Krasnova believes.
— The story requires not only an investigation by law enforcement agencies, but also a revision of the mechanism for identifying the authors of appeals to authorities, and closer attention to making decisions in absentia.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
